Kathleen Korda

Kathleen Korda was born and educated at the Daly River mission. In the 1960s, when she was a teenager, she moved out to Peppimenarti.There her mother and grandmother taught her how to weave baskets, string bags and fishnets.Kathleen lives at Peppimenarti with her five daughters and nine grandchildren.

She has emerged as a specialist walipan fish-net weaver in recent years, and is currently the only member of the community to weave the nets. The process takes approximately three to six months. At the very beginning of the wet season the natural pigments (berries, roots and ash) are collected and used to dye the merrepen (sand-palm) fibres. Throughout the wet season, Kathleen constructs the twine and uses a dilly string bag stitch (loop stitch, knotless netting technique) to weave the net. Once the weaving is completed, the edges of the net are attached to an oval dried bamboo frame.

This is what Kathleen said about one of her walipan fish nets:- 'This one took me two or three months to weave. More time for the collecting, dying, twining.- ‘I collect the sand palm with the other women. I boil it up on my own’.-’You can get the fibre anytime. We get that sand palm same time as orange colour and grey, brown, purple’.- ‘I don't use white much when I weave’.- ‘I have done painting too but I like weaving more’.- ‘My mother taught me how, and her mother taught her’.- ‘It was really nice seeing it in the museum (MAGNT).'

Kathleen is Regina Wilson’s first cousin; her father was Regina’s mother’s brother.